Usability in the travel industry
with Miriam Walker
24thJul '07
About the event
Usability in the travel industry - a case study of usable Travel Planning tools on www.newzealand.com by Miriam Walker of usability consultancy Shift.
Miriam walked us through a case study in which she and her team tackled some of the most challenging online travel planning user experiences. She showed how a complex set of travel entities (locations, could be linked together and personalised by a user who had no prior knowledge of the country).
Their approach to use testing included a mix of paper based and flash based prototypes in order to simulate the proposed rich application interface that underpins the website's Travel Planner (and you really should have a look if you've not seen it already - www.newzealand.com). The talk included insights into some of the limitations of testing rich internet applications, and how a mix of high fidelity prototype and paper based testing can overcome this.
Miriam also described the approach taken to a complex set of site search challenges, weighing up the pros and cons of structured searches versus Google-like searches, and - amongst other things - some handy tips for handling zero search results.
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